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Profanaciones
La quinta edición de uno de los clásicos del catálogo de Adriana Hidalgo. Este libro de Giorgio Agamben reúne diez ensayos breves, diez sutiles indagaciones acerca de algunos temas centrales de la filosofía contemporánea: lo sagrado y lo profano, el proceso de subjetivación y desubjetivación, la percepción benjaminiana del capitalismo como religión de la modernidad.
1248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Giorgio Agamben
268 books1,013 followersGiorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.
In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.
He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.
In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.
He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.
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December 14, 2022
جستارهای کتاب بخصوص قطعاتی که نگران قطعاتی از بنیامین است فوق‌العاده بود. بعضی ارجاعات متنها را با چندباره خواندن هم درنمی‌یافتم که گمان نمی‌کنم مسئله از ترجمه و برابرنهادها باشد غالباً. خیلی وقت بود کتاب کوچکی نخوانده بودم که در میانه‌ی کار چشم ببندم و از ترکیب‌بندی جملات و نوع تقرب رتوریک به موضوع و بسط موضوع لذت ببرم. ساختار این متنها اغلب همان چیزی بود که من در متنهای کوتاه جستارگونه دوستتر می‌دارم: گاهی رها و با خط‌وربطی خلاقانه و جهش فکری به سیاق شعر — مثلاً آن قطعه‌ی کوتاه هشت-نه سطری در میانه‌ی جستار اول که لذت کودکان را از چشم‌گذاشتن و پنهان شدن و بعد پیدا شدن قیاس میکند با رفتار شاعران در پنهان شدن و میل به دیده نشدن آن دیگری وقتی در نوع نوشتن یا امضا پس بعضی خطاها یا رمزوارنوشتن‌ها پناه می‌گیرد. این کیفیت «شعر» است که آدمی ببیند دلش می‌خواهد متن را در یک صفحه مثل نقاشی تمام و کمال از سر تا ته پیش چشم داشته باشد.
November 20, 2022
Ποι@ ψήνεται να ιδρύσουμε σύνδεσμο ΑΓΑΜΠΕΝ ΧΟΥΛΙΓΚΑΝΣ;
November 18, 2020
درک دقیق و کاملی از مباحث اقتصادی و فلسفی ندارم . مثلا " سالهاست که اگر امروز مفهوم " ارزش اضافی " مطرح شده مارکس را خوانده و فکرکرده ام که آن راکاملا" دریافته ام ، درکمترازیک شبانه روزمتوجه شده ام که دراشتباه بوده ام . البته درمواجهه با فلسفه وضعیت بهتری دارم.
شاید اگر قطرکتاب کم نبود و نمیدانستم که درده فصل مختصر" نگاهی به دنیای هنر ، فیلم ، عکاسی و...دارد ، امکان نداشت که به سراغش بروم . تا آنجا که من برداشت کردم خوشم آمد .یکی دو فصل راهم خیلی کم فهمیدم که برمن حرجی نبود. ازمتن یکی از فصل ها :
هیچ‌چیز در دنیا ساده‌تر و بشری‌تر از میل‌ورزیدن نیست. پس چرا نمی‌توانیم میل‌های خود را اظهار كنیم؟ چرا بیان‌كردن و به قالب كلمات ریختن میل‌ها برای ما این‌قدر دشوار است؟ این كار به قدری دشوار است كه سرانجام آنها را مخفی می‌كنیم و جایی در نهانخانه دلمان دخمه‌ای برای آنها می‌سازیم و میل‌ها در آن دخمه مومیایی و مدفون می‌شوند، معلق می‌شوند و چشم‌به‌راه می‌مانند.
ما قادر نیستیم میل‌های خویش را در قالب زبان بریزیم، چراکه آنها را تصور کرده‌ایم، «تصورکردن» به معنای اخص، یعنی از آنها تصوری در ذهن خود ساخته‌ایم. درواقع، در دخمه درونمان چیزی به جز مشتی تصویر نیست، مثل کتاب مصوری برای کودکانی که هنوز خواندن نمی‌دانند.
درمیان‌گذاشتن میل‌های به‌تصویردرآمده و تصویرهای مورد میل، اما، کار دشواری است. به همین سبب است که ما این کار را به بعد موکول می‌کنیم. موکول می‌کنیم به لحظه‌ای که رفته‌رفته در می‌یابیم میل‌مان تا ابد برنیاورده خواهد ماند- و در‌می‌یابیم که این میل اظهارنشده، خودِ واقعی ماست که تا ابد در دخمه درونمان زندانی شده است .
بحث کوتاهی هم درفصل حرمت شکنی ها راجع به صنعت هرزه نمایی ( پورنوگرافی ) دارد که برای من جدید وجالب بود.
شاید اگر قطرکتاب کم نبود و نمیدانستم که درده فصل مختصر" نگاهی به دنیای هنر ، فیلم ، عکاسی و...دارد ، امکان نداشت که به سراغش بروم . تا آنجا که من برداشت کردم خوشم آمد .یکی دو فصل راهم خیلی کم فهمیدم که برمن حرجی نبود. ازمتن یکی از فصل ها :
هیچ‌چیز در دنیا ساده‌تر و بشری‌تر از میل‌ورزیدن نیست. پس چرا نمی‌توانیم میل‌های خود را اظهار كنیم؟ چرا بیان‌كردن و به قالب كلمات ریختن میل‌ها برای ما این‌قدر دشوار است؟ این كار به قدری دشوار است كه سرانجام آنها را مخفی می‌كنیم و جایی در نهانخانه دلمان دخمه‌ای برای آنها می‌سازیم و میل‌ها در آن دخمه مومیایی و مدفون می‌شوند، معلق می‌شوند و چشم‌به‌راه می‌مانند.
ما قادر نیستیم میل‌های خویش را در قالب زبان بریزیم، چراکه آنها را تصور کرده‌ایم، «تصورکردن» به معنای اخص، یعنی از آنها تصوری در ذهن خود ساخته‌ایم. درواقع، در دخمه درونمان چیزی به جز مشتی تصویر نیست، مثل کتاب مصوری برای کودکانی که هنوز خواندن نمی‌دانند.
درمیان‌گذاشتن میل‌های به‌تصویردرآمده و تصویرهای مورد میل، اما، کار دشواری است. به همین سبب است که ما این کار را به بعد موکول می‌کنیم. موکول می‌کنیم به لحظه‌ای که رفته‌رفته در می‌یابیم میل‌مان تا ابد برنیاورده خواهد ماند- و در‌می‌یابیم که این میل اظهارنشده، خودِ واقعی ماست که تا ابد در دخمه درونمان زندانی شده است .
بحث کوتاهی هم درفصل حرمت شکنی ها راجع به صنعت هرزه نمایی ( پورنوگرافی ) دارد که برای من جدید وجالب بود.
September 7, 2024
موضوعات و ایده های جدیدی مطرح میکنه،از انسان شناسی گرفته تا سرمایه داری ،میل و ...
و برام خیلی جالب بود که تجربه ها از همه جا گرد اومده بودن، از قایم باشک های بچگی گرفته تا کتاب های فوکو و جامعه نمایش و گردشگری و عکاسی و سینما و رمان های مختلف.
مجموعه زیبایی بود ولی به نظرم یکم قبلش آمادگی میخواد مثلا اونجا ها که راجع به مصرف و استفاده حرف میزنه یکم پیشینه از وضع بشر(هانا آرنت) و جامعه نمایش(مثلا کتاب گی دوبور) نیازه برای درک بهتر ، یا قسمتی که از فوکو صحبت میکنه که من چون زیاد فوکو نخوندم ی جاهایی سخت بود برام. در کل اگه دنبال ایده های ناب و یه دید جدید و جالب از فلسفه هستین کتاب خوبیه.
و برام خیلی جالب بود که تجربه ها از همه جا گرد اومده بودن، از قایم باشک های بچگی گرفته تا کتاب های فوکو و جامعه نمایش و گردشگری و عکاسی و سینما و رمان های مختلف.
مجموعه زیبایی بود ولی به نظرم یکم قبلش آمادگی میخواد مثلا اونجا ها که راجع به مصرف و استفاده حرف میزنه یکم پیشینه از وضع بشر(هانا آرنت) و جامعه نمایش(مثلا کتاب گی دوبور) نیازه برای درک بهتر ، یا قسمتی که از فوکو صحبت میکنه که من چون زیاد فوکو نخوندم ی جاهایی سخت بود برام. در کل اگه دنبال ایده های ناب و یه دید جدید و جالب از فلسفه هستین کتاب خوبیه.
September 27, 2024
ترجمه‌ی بسیار خوبی داره
September 10, 2007
Similar to his Idea of Prose, Profanations is a series of short writings spanning Agamben's various literary and philosophical concerns. The main essay, "In Praise of Profanation," seems to function as a bridge of sorts between earlier and later components of A.'s Homo Sacer series (from 1995's volume I to 2007's The Kingdom and the Glory, vol. II:2).
The reflections on W. Benjamin's "Capitalism as Religion" are astute, although A. still seems to assume that Roman legal code in all its nuances is the secret cypher of reality, which is a dubious assumption, no matter how philologically correct the readings are (!). Some familiar themes (the significance of gesture, pornography, etc.) resurface; his ruminations on theological concepts make a certain literary sense within his framework, but one wonders how seriously he really takes his own formulations (especially in light of the sense of play advocated, and profaning as creating new uses). I found the most intriguing and developed sections to be the "Parody" chapter and the conclusion of "Special Being," which elegantly redefines Debord's sense of "spectacle" in relation to medieval debates on the metaphysical status of images (! -- in that regard, complements his "Shekinah" chapter in The Coming Community, which reformulated Debord via a Rabbinic allegory; that short chapter is still probably the best and most succinct secondary writing on The Society of the Spectacle around, forgiving the book all its defects while restating its main impetus more elegantly than Debord himself probably ever could have).
So, it's in these shorter, more casual writings (as in Idea of Prose, Means Without End) where Agamben reveals some of the assumptions that often go unstated or passed over in his longer or more formally restricted books. A. states in "Judgment Day": "I know with absolute certainty that she ['a photograph -- a rather well-known one, in fact -- that shows the face of a young Brazilian girl, who seems to stare harshly at me'] is and will be my judge, today as on the final judgment day" (p. 26). One just wonders if he's as absolutely certain about all his playful/profaned claims about angels, demons, and the messiah (!).
It's strange to think that so much learning and erudition, which A. clearly possesses in abundance, in the end is willingly resigned to just play (rather than to knowledge, or to experience...) -- but what to A. is just playing around still results in an interesting book (& beautifully designed by the Zone Books crew).
The reflections on W. Benjamin's "Capitalism as Religion" are astute, although A. still seems to assume that Roman legal code in all its nuances is the secret cypher of reality, which is a dubious assumption, no matter how philologically correct the readings are (!). Some familiar themes (the significance of gesture, pornography, etc.) resurface; his ruminations on theological concepts make a certain literary sense within his framework, but one wonders how seriously he really takes his own formulations (especially in light of the sense of play advocated, and profaning as creating new uses). I found the most intriguing and developed sections to be the "Parody" chapter and the conclusion of "Special Being," which elegantly redefines Debord's sense of "spectacle" in relation to medieval debates on the metaphysical status of images (! -- in that regard, complements his "Shekinah" chapter in The Coming Community, which reformulated Debord via a Rabbinic allegory; that short chapter is still probably the best and most succinct secondary writing on The Society of the Spectacle around, forgiving the book all its defects while restating its main impetus more elegantly than Debord himself probably ever could have).
So, it's in these shorter, more casual writings (as in Idea of Prose, Means Without End) where Agamben reveals some of the assumptions that often go unstated or passed over in his longer or more formally restricted books. A. states in "Judgment Day": "I know with absolute certainty that she ['a photograph -- a rather well-known one, in fact -- that shows the face of a young Brazilian girl, who seems to stare harshly at me'] is and will be my judge, today as on the final judgment day" (p. 26). One just wonders if he's as absolutely certain about all his playful/profaned claims about angels, demons, and the messiah (!).
It's strange to think that so much learning and erudition, which A. clearly possesses in abundance, in the end is willingly resigned to just play (rather than to knowledge, or to experience...) -- but what to A. is just playing around still results in an interesting book (& beautifully designed by the Zone Books crew).
March 31, 2007
EL CAPITALISMO COMO RELIGIÓN
El capitalismo como religión es el título de uno de los más penetrantes fragmentos póstumos de Walter Benjamin. Según Benjamin, el capitalismo no representa sólo, como en Weber, una secularización de la fe protestante, sino que es él mismo esencialmente un fenómeno religioso, que se desarrolla en modo parasitario a partir del cristianismo. Como tal, como religión de la modernidad, está definido por tres características: 1) Es una religión cultual, quizás la más extrema y absoluta que haya jamás existido. Todo en ella tiene significado sólo en referencia al cumplimiento de un culto, no respecto de un dogma o de una idea. 2) Este culto es permanente, es la celebración de un culto "sin tregua y sin respiro". Los días de fiesta y de vacaciones no interrumpen el culto, sino que lo integran. 3) El culto capitalista no está dirigido a la redención ni a la expiación de una culpa, sino a la culpa misma. "El capitalismo es quizás el único caso de un culto no expiatorio, sino culpabilizante... Una monstruosa conciencia culpable que no conoce redención se transforma en culto, no para expiar en él su culpa, sino para volverla universal... y para capturar finalmente al propio Dios en la culpa... Dios no ha muerto, sino que ha sido incorporado en el destino del hombre." Precisamente porque tiende con todas sus fuerzas no a la redención, sino a la culpa; no a la esperanza, sino a la desesperación, el capitalismo como religión no mira a la transformación del mundo, sino a su destrucción (...) el capitalismo, llevando al extremo una tendencia ya presente en el cristianismo, generaliza y absolutiza en cada ámbito la estructura de la separación que define la religión. Allí donde el sacrificio señalaba el paso de lo profano a lo sagrado y de lo sagrado a lo profano, ahora hay un único, multiforme, incesante proceso de separación, que inviste cada cosa, cada lugar, cada actividad humana para dividirla de sí misma y que es completamente indiferente a la cesura sacro/profano, divino/humano. En su forma extrema, la religión capitalista realiza la pura forma de la separación, sin que haya nada que separar. Una profanación absoluta y sin residuos coincide ahora con una consagración igualmente vacua e integral. Y como en la mercancía la separación es inherente a la forma misma del objeto, que se escinde en valor de uso y valor de cambio y se transforma en un fetiche inaprensible, así ahora todo lo que es actuado, producido y vivido -incluso el cuerpo humano, incluso la sexualidad, incluso el lenguaje- son divididos de sí mismos y desplazados en una esfera separada que ya no define alguna división sustancial y en la cual cada uso se vuelve duraderamente imposible. Esta esfera es el consumo. Si, como se ha sugerido, llamamos espectáculo a la fase extrema del capitalismo que estamos viviendo, en la cual cada cosa es exhibida en su separación de sí misma, entonces espectáculo y consumo son las dos caras de una única imposibilidad de usar. Lo que no puede ser usado es, como tal, consignado al consumo o a la exhibición espectacular. Pero eso significa que profanar se ha vuelto imposible (...) Si profanar significa devolver al uso común lo que fue separado en la esfera de lo sagrado, la religión capitalista en su fase extrema apunta a la creación de un absolutamente Improfanable.
GIORGIO AGAMBEN, Profanaciones. Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2005.
El capitalismo como religión es el título de uno de los más penetrantes fragmentos póstumos de Walter Benjamin. Según Benjamin, el capitalismo no representa sólo, como en Weber, una secularización de la fe protestante, sino que es él mismo esencialmente un fenómeno religioso, que se desarrolla en modo parasitario a partir del cristianismo. Como tal, como religión de la modernidad, está definido por tres características: 1) Es una religión cultual, quizás la más extrema y absoluta que haya jamás existido. Todo en ella tiene significado sólo en referencia al cumplimiento de un culto, no respecto de un dogma o de una idea. 2) Este culto es permanente, es la celebración de un culto "sin tregua y sin respiro". Los días de fiesta y de vacaciones no interrumpen el culto, sino que lo integran. 3) El culto capitalista no está dirigido a la redención ni a la expiación de una culpa, sino a la culpa misma. "El capitalismo es quizás el único caso de un culto no expiatorio, sino culpabilizante... Una monstruosa conciencia culpable que no conoce redención se transforma en culto, no para expiar en él su culpa, sino para volverla universal... y para capturar finalmente al propio Dios en la culpa... Dios no ha muerto, sino que ha sido incorporado en el destino del hombre." Precisamente porque tiende con todas sus fuerzas no a la redención, sino a la culpa; no a la esperanza, sino a la desesperación, el capitalismo como religión no mira a la transformación del mundo, sino a su destrucción (...) el capitalismo, llevando al extremo una tendencia ya presente en el cristianismo, generaliza y absolutiza en cada ámbito la estructura de la separación que define la religión. Allí donde el sacrificio señalaba el paso de lo profano a lo sagrado y de lo sagrado a lo profano, ahora hay un único, multiforme, incesante proceso de separación, que inviste cada cosa, cada lugar, cada actividad humana para dividirla de sí misma y que es completamente indiferente a la cesura sacro/profano, divino/humano. En su forma extrema, la religión capitalista realiza la pura forma de la separación, sin que haya nada que separar. Una profanación absoluta y sin residuos coincide ahora con una consagración igualmente vacua e integral. Y como en la mercancía la separación es inherente a la forma misma del objeto, que se escinde en valor de uso y valor de cambio y se transforma en un fetiche inaprensible, así ahora todo lo que es actuado, producido y vivido -incluso el cuerpo humano, incluso la sexualidad, incluso el lenguaje- son divididos de sí mismos y desplazados en una esfera separada que ya no define alguna división sustancial y en la cual cada uso se vuelve duraderamente imposible. Esta esfera es el consumo. Si, como se ha sugerido, llamamos espectáculo a la fase extrema del capitalismo que estamos viviendo, en la cual cada cosa es exhibida en su separación de sí misma, entonces espectáculo y consumo son las dos caras de una única imposibilidad de usar. Lo que no puede ser usado es, como tal, consignado al consumo o a la exhibición espectacular. Pero eso significa que profanar se ha vuelto imposible (...) Si profanar significa devolver al uso común lo que fue separado en la esfera de lo sagrado, la religión capitalista en su fase extrema apunta a la creación de un absolutamente Improfanable.
GIORGIO AGAMBEN, Profanaciones. Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2005.
March 17, 2025
سانچو پانزا پا در سالن سینمای شهرستانی دور از پایتخت می‌گذارد. دنبال دن کیشوت می‌گردد و می‌بیند او گوشه‌ی سالن نشسته و زل زده به پرده‌ی نمایش. سالن تقریباً پر است. در بالکن که به تراس بزرگی می‌ماند، بچه‌هایی ازدحام کرده‌اند که مدام سروصدا می‌کنند. پس از چند تلاش نافرجام برای رسیدن به دن کیشوت، سانچو با اکراه در یکی از صندلی‌های ردیف جلو می‌نشیند. کنار دخترکی (دلسینئا) که آب‌نبات چوبی تعارفش میکند. پخش فیلم شروع شده؛ فیلمی تاریخی است. روی پرده، شهسوارانی زره‌پوش سوار بر اسب می‌تازند. ناگهان زنی بر پرده‌ی نمایش ظاهر میشود. در خطر است. دن کیشوت هولکی برمی‌خیزد. تیغ از نیام برمی‌کشد، به پرده‌ی نمایش هجوم می‌برد و با چند ضربه آغازه میکند به پاره کردن پرده. زن و شهسواران را همچنان می‌توان بر پرده دید، اما چاک سیاهی که شمشیر دن کیشوت در پرده پدید آورده بزرگ و بزرگتر میشود و تصویرها را با سرسختی به کام خود فرومی‌برد. در پایان، هیچ از پرده به جا نمی‌ماند و تنها داربست چوبی در دید می‌ماند. تماشاگران خشمگین سالن را ترک می‌کنند، اما بچه‌ها در بالکن همچنان دیوانه‌وار دن کیشوت را تشویق می‌کنند. فقط دخترک است که آن پایین در سالن ایستاده و ناخشنود به او چشم دوخته است.
با تخیلات خویش چه باید کنیم؟ دوست‌شان بداریم و باورشان کنیم تا آن حد که مجبور شویم نابود و مخدوش‌شان کنیم، اما هنگامی که تخیلاتمان آخر سر نشان می‌دهند که خالی‌اند و برنیاورده، هنگامی‌که پوچی و بی‌معنابودنی را که از آن ساخته شده‌اند، نشان می‌دهند، فقط آن هنگام می‌توانیم بهای حقیقت‌شان را بپردازیم و درک کنیم که دلسینئا که جانش را نجات داده‌ایم نمی‌تواند به ما عشق ورزد.
با تخیلات خویش چه باید کنیم؟ دوست‌شان بداریم و باورشان کنیم تا آن حد که مجبور شویم نابود و مخدوش‌شان کنیم، اما هنگامی که تخیلاتمان آخر سر نشان می‌دهند که خالی‌اند و برنیاورده، هنگامی‌که پوچی و بی‌معنابودنی را که از آن ساخته شده‌اند، نشان می‌دهند، فقط آن هنگام می‌توانیم بهای حقیقت‌شان را بپردازیم و درک کنیم که دلسینئا که جانش را نجات داده‌ایم نمی‌تواند به ما عشق ورزد.
January 16, 2022
Srednjevekovni mislioci su izgled zvali intentio, namera. Termin imenuje unutrašnji naboj (intus tensio) svakog bića, koji ga nagoni da stvori svoju sliku, da saopšti sebe. Izgled, u ovom smislu, nije drugo do naboj, ljubav kojom svako biće želi samo sebe, želi da opstane u sopstvenom biću, da saopšti sebe. U slici, biće i žudnja, postojanje i naprezanje savršeno se podudaraju. Voleti drugo biće znači: želeti njegov izgled, to jest, želeti želju kojom ono želi da istraje u sopstvenom biću. Specijalno biće je, u ovom smislu, zajedničko ili opšte biće i to je nešto poput slike ili lica čovečanstva. (64)
February 27, 2024
متن‌هایی زیبا و قابل تامل(چندین و چند بار میشود خواند) و ترجمه‌ای دل‌نشین و درخشان
October 8, 2025
آگامبن از تبار آن متفکرانی‌ست که گویی مرز میان اندیشیدن و سخن گفتن را از اساس درهم می‌ریزد، در او دانستن نه انباشت اطلاعات بلکه گونه‌ای اقامت در میان امکان‌های زبان است. او از آن فیلسوفانی‌ست که حتی اگر از او درباره مقعد فیل بپرسی، پاسخ را نه در سطح ابژه بلکه در تلاقی الهیات و سیاست، در نقطه‌ای که بدن حیوان و امر قدسی به هم می‌رسند،جست‌وجو خواهد کرد. صالح نجفی، مترجم اثر، خود حامل نوعی نبوغ تفسیری‌ست که از منطق بورژوایی صرف فرهنگ متمایز است، او همان‌قدر به دقت واژه وفادار می‌ماند که به نوسان معنا. ترجمه، حاصل هم‌افزایی دو ذهن است که فرهادپور را می‌توان به مثابه ویراستار پنهان حضور در غیاب در آن دید. این کتاب، در ساحت خوانش، نه صرفا مجموعه‌ای از فصل‌ها بلکه شبکه‌ای از طنین‌های مفهومی‌ست. برای من فصل‌های روز جزا و میل ورزیدن همچون دو قطب یک دیالکتیک ناتمام جلوه کردند، یکی رجعت الاهیاتی به زمان واپسین، دیگری انفجار میل در میانهٔ نظم نمادین. فلسفه آگامبن، در بنیان خود، همچون ساختاری از امکان‌های معلق است، مفاهیمی چون وضعیت استثنایی و هومو ساکر از حیث سیاسی، در ظاهر نقدی بر منطق حاکمیت‌اند، اما در عمق خود بیشتر به نوعی تفکر اپوپتیک تعلق دارند، نه پراگماتیک. او به جای کنش سیاسی، امکان‌ناپذیری کنش را به مثابه خود صحنهٔ سیاست برمی‌کشد. سبک زبان او، پراکنده، تکه‌تکه و ناتمام بازتابی است از وارثت بنیامینی‌اش، نوشتاری چون پاره‌ای از ژست‌ها. اگر به تلاقی الاهیات، سیاست و زیبایی‌شناسی علاقه‌مندید، این کتاب نه صرفا خواندنی بلکه زیستنی است، متنی که نمی‌خوانی، بلکه در آن اقامت می‌کنی، همان‌گونه که در سکوت میان دو واژه، فلسفه به امکان بدل میشود.
December 12, 2022
اصلاً نمی‌دونم چرا دارم کتاب می‌خونم این وسط
March 21, 2025
دارم ترغیب می‌شم که باقی آثار آگامبن رو هم یکی‌یکی بخونم.
ترجمه خیلی خوب بود، گرچه بعضاً معادل‌گذاری‌ها عجیب بود. و کلاً جاهایی به ویرایش نیاز داشت.
در کل، ویرایش کتاب بد بود که روال عادی نشر مرکزه.
ترجمه خیلی خوب بود، گرچه بعضاً معادل‌گذاری‌ها عجیب بود. و کلاً جاهایی به ویرایش نیاز داشت.
در کل، ویرایش کتاب بد بود که روال عادی نشر مرکزه.
June 12, 2025
یکی از کتابهایی که با لذت فراوان خواندم
June 3, 2011
Verb1.adulterate - corrupt, debase, or make impure by adding a foreign or inferior substance; often by replacing valuable ingredients with inferior ones; "adulterate liquor".
Synonyms: adulterate, debase, doctor, load.
These verbs mean to make impure or inferior by adding foreign substances to something: adulterate coffee with ground acorns; silver debased with copper; doctored the wine with water; rag paper loaded with wood fiber.
A photo from some time ago that I wish I would have kept, where my wife's face was simply angelic, she sitting backwards in a ladder-back chair, nude, her legs spread wide and her genitals on display. Of course, my wife and I don't do porn so we rejected the photograph, but in retrospect, my wife was so damn beautiful in that photograph, totally unaware she was showing too much of her genitalia, and because of it, innocent to the consequences possible, even, for example, if her aging dad, who was still living at the time, ever found out. Because of my wife's innocence the problem now existed where our art did not interface with pornography in the sense described in the opening quote because the model had no feelings of conflict and contradiction during the shoot, but would have had afterward when she saw the results and thought of her father finding out if she went ahead and approved of the picture's publication. I, as photographer, was guilty from the beginning simply because I wanted the shot completed as composed in order to see what we could see, but never did I have any idea of publishing it and I went radically extreme like a dummy so far as removing it from my files.
Nathalie Boët (also known as Chloë des Lysses), has some fantastic photos taken of her where she is famously indifferent to being fucked hard and in many settings and positions. That is the extent of my pornography "likes" pertaining to photography. And truth be known this is the type of photo I would love to capture my wife in. The indifference. But that will never happen. She is not even close to the type of person who could make art like that. I am not sure she is even the type of person who would allow herself to be fucked like that, the way the pros do it and with all that heavy machinery involved. (We are both recovering puritans.) But I have never thought I had to resort to bondage or tricks to get a powerful image. Practice and a good eye helps.
One of my favorite series of what I consider "pornographic art photographs" ever done has been tainted for me with the knowledge that Boët's husband at the time was simply using her and she has gained no profit from her work since they have divorced. What I have learned from the web, and of course some of this may not be true, is Dahmane, Boët's ex-husband, has a long reputation of degrading all his models on the set, not paying them, publishing the photographs in magazines without the models being informed of this, or getting their cut, and on. Dahmane has published at least two books of photos using Chloë as his model as well as selling expensive prints of their work together. Chloë, I understand, was pretty much broke after she split with him and has yet to receive any payment for her nude and pornographic efforts in front of his camera. I believe she even was ordered by a French judge to pay back taxes owed on profits from her work, profits that she never even received. Seems the judge considered her a whore. The famous philosopher Giorgio Agamben writes about her unique work in front of the camera in his very interesting book titled, Profanations.
Synonyms: adulterate, debase, doctor, load.
These verbs mean to make impure or inferior by adding foreign substances to something: adulterate coffee with ground acorns; silver debased with copper; doctored the wine with water; rag paper loaded with wood fiber.
A photo from some time ago that I wish I would have kept, where my wife's face was simply angelic, she sitting backwards in a ladder-back chair, nude, her legs spread wide and her genitals on display. Of course, my wife and I don't do porn so we rejected the photograph, but in retrospect, my wife was so damn beautiful in that photograph, totally unaware she was showing too much of her genitalia, and because of it, innocent to the consequences possible, even, for example, if her aging dad, who was still living at the time, ever found out. Because of my wife's innocence the problem now existed where our art did not interface with pornography in the sense described in the opening quote because the model had no feelings of conflict and contradiction during the shoot, but would have had afterward when she saw the results and thought of her father finding out if she went ahead and approved of the picture's publication. I, as photographer, was guilty from the beginning simply because I wanted the shot completed as composed in order to see what we could see, but never did I have any idea of publishing it and I went radically extreme like a dummy so far as removing it from my files.
Nathalie Boët (also known as Chloë des Lysses), has some fantastic photos taken of her where she is famously indifferent to being fucked hard and in many settings and positions. That is the extent of my pornography "likes" pertaining to photography. And truth be known this is the type of photo I would love to capture my wife in. The indifference. But that will never happen. She is not even close to the type of person who could make art like that. I am not sure she is even the type of person who would allow herself to be fucked like that, the way the pros do it and with all that heavy machinery involved. (We are both recovering puritans.) But I have never thought I had to resort to bondage or tricks to get a powerful image. Practice and a good eye helps.
One of my favorite series of what I consider "pornographic art photographs" ever done has been tainted for me with the knowledge that Boët's husband at the time was simply using her and she has gained no profit from her work since they have divorced. What I have learned from the web, and of course some of this may not be true, is Dahmane, Boët's ex-husband, has a long reputation of degrading all his models on the set, not paying them, publishing the photographs in magazines without the models being informed of this, or getting their cut, and on. Dahmane has published at least two books of photos using Chloë as his model as well as selling expensive prints of their work together. Chloë, I understand, was pretty much broke after she split with him and has yet to receive any payment for her nude and pornographic efforts in front of his camera. I believe she even was ordered by a French judge to pay back taxes owed on profits from her work, profits that she never even received. Seems the judge considered her a whore. The famous philosopher Giorgio Agamben writes about her unique work in front of the camera in his very interesting book titled, Profanations.
December 12, 2019
Kısa biçimde, birbiriyle ilişkili meselelere, mefhumlara odaklanmış, kendisi de kısa ama bir o kadar da vurucu yanları, parçaları olan bir kitap...
Ben özellikle "dünyevileştirmeye övgü" kısmını okurken bir yoğunluk yaşadım:
Her ayrım, kendi içerisinde bir dinsel çekirdek muhafaza etmektedir. Peki, ayrımların çoğaldığı, çoğalırken de pekiştiği kapitalist toplum nasıl bir dinsel mizaca sahiptir? Kapitalizm, kendi içerisinde nasıl bir din muhafaza eder?
Kendinden önceki dinlerin aksine herşeyin halesini yerle bir eden, herşeyi yeryüzüne indiren ve tüketilebilir nesnelere dönüştüren kapitalist imgelem, iktidarı sekülerleştirmiş, göksel olanla dünyevi olanın yerini değiştirmiş, teolojik kavramları politikleştirmiştir.
Dinlerin aksine kapitalizmin bir selamet vaadi yoktur; hiçlik vaadeden bir umutsuzluk dini gibidir. Suça ayrıcalık tanır. Dünyayı değiştirmekle ilgilenmez, ve onu tahrip eder. Herşeyi dünyevileştirir, tüketime dahil eder.
Ben özellikle "dünyevileştirmeye övgü" kısmını okurken bir yoğunluk yaşadım:
Her ayrım, kendi içerisinde bir dinsel çekirdek muhafaza etmektedir. Peki, ayrımların çoğaldığı, çoğalırken de pekiştiği kapitalist toplum nasıl bir dinsel mizaca sahiptir? Kapitalizm, kendi içerisinde nasıl bir din muhafaza eder?
Kendinden önceki dinlerin aksine herşeyin halesini yerle bir eden, herşeyi yeryüzüne indiren ve tüketilebilir nesnelere dönüştüren kapitalist imgelem, iktidarı sekülerleştirmiş, göksel olanla dünyevi olanın yerini değiştirmiş, teolojik kavramları politikleştirmiştir.
Dinlerin aksine kapitalizmin bir selamet vaadi yoktur; hiçlik vaadeden bir umutsuzluk dini gibidir. Suça ayrıcalık tanır. Dünyayı değiştirmekle ilgilenmez, ve onu tahrip eder. Herşeyi dünyevileştirir, tüketime dahil eder.
October 8, 2019
Superficial y farragoso... o yo tenía un mal día.
May 7, 2024
10 crystal clear essays on a variety of subjects. I read the book cover to cover in a single sitting.
August 19, 2018
เป็นอีกเล่มของอากัมเบนที่บอกได้ว่า tasty มากๆ ส่วนตัวชอบตามอ่านงานแกอยู่แล้วเพราะเขียนสนุก มีการสืบสวนความคิดและมีความเป็นวรรณกรรมมากๆ เล่มนี้มี 10 บทความ บท 1-2-7-8-9 นี่ชอบมากๆ บท 1-2-6 อ่านง่ายหน่อย แต่บทอื่นๆ นี่เต็มไปด้วยรายละเอียดทางปรัชญา ประวัติศาสตร์ยุคกรีกและยุคกลาง เอกลักษณ์ของอากัมเบนแทบทุกงานคือจะพูดแนวคิดทางเทววิทยาอยู่เสมอ บทที่9 พูดถึงทุนนิยมกับแนวคิดทางเทววิทยากับประวัติศาสตร์ยุคกลางได้น่าสนใจมาก
เล่มนี้ประเด็นหลักจะเป็นพวกเรื่องวรรณกรรม การเขียน ภาพถ่าย ภาพยนต์ การสร้างสรรค์ ตัวตน ความรัก ความสุข ความทรงจำ
ใครอ่านอากัมเบนจะรู้ว่าหลายๆ งาน หลายๆ เล่ม จะมีแกนความคิดบางอย่างที่มันคล้ายกับงานอื่น หรือเล่มอื่นๆ ของเขา นี่เป็นตัวอย่างของกระบวนการพัฒนาความคิดที่ก่อตัวไปเป็นข้อเสนอใหญ่ๆ ที่คนรู้จักกันอย่างซีรีย์มนุษย์ศักดิ์สิทธิ์ ใครสนใจแก่นข้อเสนอของอากัมเบน สามารถอ่านตัวรอบนอกงานหลักๆ อย่างพวกหนังสือเล่มเล็กๆ แบบนี้ได้ ในทางที่ดีคือได้เห็นความเป็นไปได้อย่างอื่นๆ ที่เขาเสนอในงานหลักๆ เลยด้วย
ไอ้ที่พูดกันๆ สอนๆ กันเรื่องสภาวะยกเว้น ชีวิตเปลือยเปล่าเนี่ย ถ้าลองมาอ่านตัวบทแท้ๆ จริงจังแล้ว จะเห็นอะไรที่จัดจ้านและบันเทิงใจมาก ไม่ได้จืดชืดแห้งแล้งเหมือนเวลาในไทยเขาสอนอากัมเบนในทางรัฐศาสตร์หรือทางกฎหมายเลย
เล่มนี้ประเด็นหลักจะเป็นพวกเรื่องวรรณกรรม การเขียน ภาพถ่าย ภาพยนต์ การสร้างสรรค์ ตัวตน ความรัก ความสุข ความทรงจำ
ใครอ่านอากัมเบนจะรู้ว่าหลายๆ งาน หลายๆ เล่ม จะมีแกนความคิดบางอย่างที่มันคล้ายกับงานอื่น หรือเล่มอื่นๆ ของเขา นี่เป็นตัวอย่างของกระบวนการพัฒนาความคิดที่ก่อตัวไปเป็นข้อเสนอใหญ่ๆ ที่คนรู้จักกันอย่างซีรีย์มนุษย์ศักดิ์สิทธิ์ ใครสนใจแก่นข้อเสนอของอากัมเบน สามารถอ่านตัวรอบนอกงานหลักๆ อย่างพวกหนังสือเล่มเล็กๆ แบบนี้ได้ ในทางที่ดีคือได้เห็นความเป็นไปได้อย่างอื่นๆ ที่เขาเสนอในงานหลักๆ เลยด้วย
ไอ้ที่พูดกันๆ สอนๆ กันเรื่องสภาวะยกเว้น ชีวิตเปลือยเปล่าเนี่ย ถ้าลองมาอ่านตัวบทแท้ๆ จริงจังแล้ว จะเห็นอะไรที่จัดจ้านและบันเทิงใจมาก ไม่ได้จืดชืดแห้งแล้งเหมือนเวลาในไทยเขาสอนอากัมเบนในทางรัฐศาสตร์หรือทางกฎหมายเลย
May 5, 2025
کتابی جمع و جور اما لایه‌لایه.
حرمت‌شکنی آگامبن به معنای بی‌احترامی نیست، بلکه یک عمل رهایی‌بخش و بازپس‌گیری زندگی از سازوکار قدرت، تقدس و بردگیست.
آگامبن به مفهوم genius در سنت رومی میپردازد؛ موجودی که با هر فرد زاده میشه، نه خود ماست نه کاملا غیر از ما، نه کاملا در چنگ ماست و نه کاملا از ما جداست، درواقع رابطه ما با خودمان است و زمانی ظهور پیدا میکند که در اختیار مطلق خودمان نیستیم، زمانهایی مثل خواب، سکوت، بازی و میل جنسی.و سعادت چیزی نیست که به آن از طریق اخلاقیات سنگین و نظام دینی و حقوقی و یا نهاد اجتماعی برسیم. بلکه همین‌جا، همین بدن و همین بودنِ بی‌ادعاست.
به نقل از کتاب: «بهترین عکس عکسی‌ست که نتوان از آن استفاده کرد.» عکسی که مقدس و یا کالاواره شود از دسترس خارج میشود. عکس‌هایی مانند لحظه‌ای از عبور یک عابر ناشناسِ معمولی هستند که راهی برای برگرداندن لحظه به خود زندگی را در خود دارند. آزادی از سلطه بازنمایی یعنی آزادی برای زیستن بی‌واسطه.
حرمت‌شکنی آگامبن به معنای بی‌احترامی نیست، بلکه یک عمل رهایی‌بخش و بازپس‌گیری زندگی از سازوکار قدرت، تقدس و بردگیست.
آگامبن به مفهوم genius در سنت رومی میپردازد؛ موجودی که با هر فرد زاده میشه، نه خود ماست نه کاملا غیر از ما، نه کاملا در چنگ ماست و نه کاملا از ما جداست، درواقع رابطه ما با خودمان است و زمانی ظهور پیدا میکند که در اختیار مطلق خودمان نیستیم، زمانهایی مثل خواب، سکوت، بازی و میل جنسی.و سعادت چیزی نیست که به آن از طریق اخلاقیات سنگین و نظام دینی و حقوقی و یا نهاد اجتماعی برسیم. بلکه همین‌جا، همین بدن و همین بودنِ بی‌ادعاست.
به نقل از کتاب: «بهترین عکس عکسی‌ست که نتوان از آن استفاده کرد.» عکسی که مقدس و یا کالاواره شود از دسترس خارج میشود. عکس‌هایی مانند لحظه‌ای از عبور یک عابر ناشناسِ معمولی هستند که راهی برای برگرداندن لحظه به خود زندگی را در خود دارند. آزادی از سلطه بازنمایی یعنی آزادی برای زیستن بی‌واسطه.
December 1, 2022
Like the apple - when cut horizontally - reveals a star where we expect the core, Agamben dissects and dismantles our language in new ways (specie, special, species, specchio - genus, genius, geniale, generic) and weaves that all together into poetic theory (with many historical and mythological references) to reveal stuff that is deep inside of us— hidden stuff. I can imagine people like Chomsky rolling their eyes as they flip or swipe the pages, but that makes me like it even more. Agamben is the magician of theory.
February 3, 2023
وقت احترام گذاشتن به هر چیزی سراومده، باید مقابلش ایستاد!
March 30, 2026
بعد از سال‌ها کتابی خوندم که خودم رو بعد خوندنش شخص متفاوتی می‌بینم.
بعنوان پیشنهاد:
درسگفتار «در ستایش بی‌حرمتی» از صالح نجفی رو هم گوش بدید همراهش.
بعنوان پیشنهاد:
درسگفتار «در ستایش بی‌حرمتی» از صالح نجفی رو هم گوش بدید همراهش.
May 11, 2026
Agamben and Conceptual Necromancy:
A Quaestio on Political Theology
Giorgio Agamben’s reconstruction of political theology proceeds through a striking genealogical method, concepts drawn from distant theological traditions are reassembled within a new theoretical architecture of power. The result is brilliant and provocative. Yet the procedure raises a question about the ontological status of the concepts it conjures. The argument unfolds in a structure not unlike a medieval quaestio, confronting Agamben’s genealogy with the theological ontology it implicitly presupposes.
Agamben summons concepts across centuries, exhuming patristic terms, stripping them of life into a mechanical grotesquerie. Glory, once the radiance of God, becomes a functional device, a bureaucratic administering of life. The spectacle is dazzling, but it is a hollow brilliance, devoid of ontological reason. In theological terms, it resembles something darker, a clearly thought displacement, an operation in which living concepts are reanimated after their substance has been drained. What remains is the choreography of transcendence without transcendence itself.
To transform the economy of salvation into a bureaucratic matrix, one must first empty the economy of its ontological content. The genealogy presupposes what it claims merely to describe: the ontological absence of the divine. Here, theology survives only as a symbolic residue circulating within the mechanisms of power. In this framework, God becomes less a living reality than a “disused object”, a ghost hovering above the apparatus. Some readers therefore describe Agamben’s project as a form of “profane theology” or a curious “non-non-Christianity”, religious concepts remain, yet belief in their referent is suspended. The vocabulary of messianism survives, but only as conceptual equipment. Theology is inert, repurposed. From a Christian perspective, however, this operation is not subtle. It is necromantic; the divine is emptied of life while the conceptual machinery continues to hum with eerie coherence.
The genealogy often presents hidden continuity as explanation, allowing distant epochs to appear as if they converged upon a single mechanism of government. Parallelism becomes the guise of insight, with sovereignty, administration, exception, and rule arranged into a bipolar structure repeating across centuries. Agamben treats oikonomia as if it were structurally continuous with forms of bureaucratic management; the administrative paradigm develops genealogically from that theological model. But Trinitarian economy ≠ bureaucratic administration. In the patristic tradition, especially among the Cappadocians, for Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great - oikonomia signifies the dispensatio salutis, the economy of salvation, which is the historical manifestation of the life of the Trinity. The term describes how the divine life communicates itself in history through incarnation, redemption, and sanctification. Administration, by contrast, is a procedural human function. The two share a metaphor but not an ontology. Confusing them produces a conceptual category mistake, where the drama of salvation is reduced to the diagram of an office.
Agamben’s entire theological-political reconstruction depends on this displacement of ideas. Early Christian theology distinguished between theologia - the eternal being of God - and oikonomia - God’s action in history. For the Fathers, the distinction preserved transcendence while allowing divine action in the world. Agamben reverses the logic. The economy becomes primary, while ontology quietly evaporates. Divine life recedes, administration remains. Angels, in his reading, become an administrative hierarchy transmitting commands, and liturgical glory becomes the acclamation that stabilizes authority. What was once metaphysical participation becomes functional mediation. The Trinity becomes, not the revelation of divine communion, but the archetype of distributed governance. Here the comparison with Carl Schmitt becomes illuminating. Schmitt famously argued that modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts. Sovereignty mirrors divine omnipotence, the state of exception mirrors the miracle. Yet Schmitt preserves the lineage precisely because he does not dissolve its metaphysical ground. Theology still possesses ontological weight and the possibility of divine interruption remains. Unlike Schmitt, Agamben inverts the order, he views the state of exception not as a juridical anomaly but as the existential structure of the world. The miracle disappears into administration; the economy of salvation becomes its managerial residue. Where Schmitt sees secularization, Agamben sees functional transformation. The divine ground vanishes, leaving only the apparatus.
The result is a world that appears theoretically coherent yet is predicated on the absence of what gave life to the concepts in the first place - the ontos. Under the guise of historical analysis, Agamben quietly decides that transcendence is merely an effect of discourse. The device becomes total. The machine becomes universal. Everything is administration.
In Agamben’s view, the genealogy decrees truth, reducing politics and theology alike to functional choreography. For Agamben, the state of exception is no longer a temporary suspension of order, as Carl Schmitt thought, but the hidden paradigm of modern governance itself. The exception becomes the historical process as genealogy, the rule merely confirms the exception. In theory, this yields a powerful diagnosis of modernity. In practice, it renders Agamben’s thought strangely gratuitous, socially disengaged, formally ingenious, but incapable of intervention or ethical stake. His apparatus dazzles with affirmation, yet leaves the world unchanged. While some may point to Agamben’s notion of “pure means” as evidence of potential political or ethical intervention, the framework demonstrates that these possibilities remain largely speculative, contained within the apparatus rather than enacted in the world.
What ultimately emerges is an implicit ontology of the apparatus, a vision in which reality itself is gradually replaced by the operations that claim to govern it. Yet, the consequences are social and ironic, human reality stubbornly intrudes. In tribunals, in the judgment of a magistrate, in the suffering of a particular individual, in the quiet acts of human care that escape every administrative category, the machine falters. The logical edifice cracks. Concepts remain animated in the text, but in the world they begin to fail. This is conceptual necromancy at work; life reappears on paper, while the living reality has already withdrawn.
In Agamben’s analysis, a concept is interpreted not by reference to its truth but by reference to its function within historical configurations of power. If theology can be fully explained by its role within an economy of government, then its ontological claims appear superfluous. The argument avoids confronting theology directly, it simply circumvents it. Yet if the ontological dimension cannot be absorbed into the functional, the reduction collapses. The claim to methodological neutrality evaporates. Theology is suspended, but politics and metaphysics quietly return through the back door as philosophical decisions. The reduction of ontology to function is itself a metaphysical choice.
Theology cannot be confidently affirmed as historical truth, yet modern political power still appears unintelligible without its vocabulary. Agamben appears to offer a way to retain the language while emptying it of metaphysical commitment. In this sense he stands in a strange constellation with figures such as William James and Karl Barth, though the similarities are deceptive. James approached religious language pragmatically, evaluating it by its existential consequences rather than by metaphysical certainty. Barth, by contrast, insisted that theology begins not with human categories but with divine revelation. Agamben shares neither position fully, he preserves the vocabulary without affirming the revelation that gave it birth. Unlike Schmitt, he does not juggle with ontological distinctions, yet pretends to transcend them. Benjamin preserves the messianic tension; Agamben offers the apparatus without its pulse. Heidegger, similarly, is a silent interlocutor, though he does not perform conceptual necromancy.
To read him as a political theorist making empirical claims, is to misunderstand the project entirely. This is what makes Agamben's stance a fortuitous and dishonest historical conflation. His concepts - bare life, the state of exception - belong to what he calls political ontology. They are not sociological descriptions but philosophical diagnoses of the metaphysical structure of modernity. In this interpretation, his work attempts to chart a third path between technological nihilism and religious restoration, a radical disenchantment of the world. If one challenges the empirical claims, Agamben answers that the argument is ontological; if one challenges the ontology, he answers that it is merely genealogical, that he is only undertaking a phenomenological operation, describing how concepts appear within history.
If something irreducible remains, an ontological element that escapes Agamben’s functional reduction, the genealogy is incomplete. Then the critique becomes the work of a charlatan sifting through the sands of the desert, extracting patterns where evidence does not sustain them. If, however, the system truly absorbs everything within its explanatory mechanism, the argument turns circular; it explains the world because it was constructed to absorb everything. Agamben appears less as a liberator of thought from theological illusion than as the most visible exponent of a philosophically defective tradition. The conceptual machine becomes suffocatingly coherent - Agamben, the Necromancer Supreme.
The ambiguity of the system is captured in the image with which his reconstruction of political theology concludes. If the throne is full, glory answers the presence it celebrates. If the throne is empty, glory nevertheless sustains it through acclamation. The apparatus functions in both cases. The difference lies only in whether the acclamation corresponds to reality or merely perpetuates an illusion.
But the price of this disenchantment is high. If the divine is reduced to symbolic residue, the language of transcendence becomes merely another instrument within the machinery of power. Acts committed “in the name of God” reveal no divine justice; they testify only to the persistence of historical illusion. The mechanism thus acquires a strange moral clarity. The world remains beautiful in its operability, yet the human being appears increasingly reduced to a creature trapped within the apparatus it has inherited. In Agamben’s horizon, the anticipation of death becomes the messianic condition that suspends the creative vocation of the human being. At that threshold, action no longer unfolds within a triumphant or providential logic, nor according to the beautiful, the good, or the divine. What remains is a humanity inhabiting the final remnants of historical time, dwelling among the exhausted inheritances of a past whose conceptual promises have already been spent.
A cautionary reminder that even the most brilliant Necromancer, Nietzsche, with his genealogy of morals, cannot resurrect life from what is already dead. If the patristic vision is correct, if oikonomia is not administration but the historical self-communication of the Triune life, then the machine is not the last word. The world is not merely governed, it is redeemed. The throne is not empty. And glory, in its true sense, is not the acclamation that sustains power, but the radiance of a presence that no apparatus can manufacture.
A Quaestio on Political Theology
Giorgio Agamben’s reconstruction of political theology proceeds through a striking genealogical method, concepts drawn from distant theological traditions are reassembled within a new theoretical architecture of power. The result is brilliant and provocative. Yet the procedure raises a question about the ontological status of the concepts it conjures. The argument unfolds in a structure not unlike a medieval quaestio, confronting Agamben’s genealogy with the theological ontology it implicitly presupposes.
Agamben summons concepts across centuries, exhuming patristic terms, stripping them of life into a mechanical grotesquerie. Glory, once the radiance of God, becomes a functional device, a bureaucratic administering of life. The spectacle is dazzling, but it is a hollow brilliance, devoid of ontological reason. In theological terms, it resembles something darker, a clearly thought displacement, an operation in which living concepts are reanimated after their substance has been drained. What remains is the choreography of transcendence without transcendence itself.
To transform the economy of salvation into a bureaucratic matrix, one must first empty the economy of its ontological content. The genealogy presupposes what it claims merely to describe: the ontological absence of the divine. Here, theology survives only as a symbolic residue circulating within the mechanisms of power. In this framework, God becomes less a living reality than a “disused object”, a ghost hovering above the apparatus. Some readers therefore describe Agamben’s project as a form of “profane theology” or a curious “non-non-Christianity”, religious concepts remain, yet belief in their referent is suspended. The vocabulary of messianism survives, but only as conceptual equipment. Theology is inert, repurposed. From a Christian perspective, however, this operation is not subtle. It is necromantic; the divine is emptied of life while the conceptual machinery continues to hum with eerie coherence.
The genealogy often presents hidden continuity as explanation, allowing distant epochs to appear as if they converged upon a single mechanism of government. Parallelism becomes the guise of insight, with sovereignty, administration, exception, and rule arranged into a bipolar structure repeating across centuries. Agamben treats oikonomia as if it were structurally continuous with forms of bureaucratic management; the administrative paradigm develops genealogically from that theological model. But Trinitarian economy ≠ bureaucratic administration. In the patristic tradition, especially among the Cappadocians, for Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great - oikonomia signifies the dispensatio salutis, the economy of salvation, which is the historical manifestation of the life of the Trinity. The term describes how the divine life communicates itself in history through incarnation, redemption, and sanctification. Administration, by contrast, is a procedural human function. The two share a metaphor but not an ontology. Confusing them produces a conceptual category mistake, where the drama of salvation is reduced to the diagram of an office.
Agamben’s entire theological-political reconstruction depends on this displacement of ideas. Early Christian theology distinguished between theologia - the eternal being of God - and oikonomia - God’s action in history. For the Fathers, the distinction preserved transcendence while allowing divine action in the world. Agamben reverses the logic. The economy becomes primary, while ontology quietly evaporates. Divine life recedes, administration remains. Angels, in his reading, become an administrative hierarchy transmitting commands, and liturgical glory becomes the acclamation that stabilizes authority. What was once metaphysical participation becomes functional mediation. The Trinity becomes, not the revelation of divine communion, but the archetype of distributed governance. Here the comparison with Carl Schmitt becomes illuminating. Schmitt famously argued that modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts. Sovereignty mirrors divine omnipotence, the state of exception mirrors the miracle. Yet Schmitt preserves the lineage precisely because he does not dissolve its metaphysical ground. Theology still possesses ontological weight and the possibility of divine interruption remains. Unlike Schmitt, Agamben inverts the order, he views the state of exception not as a juridical anomaly but as the existential structure of the world. The miracle disappears into administration; the economy of salvation becomes its managerial residue. Where Schmitt sees secularization, Agamben sees functional transformation. The divine ground vanishes, leaving only the apparatus.
The result is a world that appears theoretically coherent yet is predicated on the absence of what gave life to the concepts in the first place - the ontos. Under the guise of historical analysis, Agamben quietly decides that transcendence is merely an effect of discourse. The device becomes total. The machine becomes universal. Everything is administration.
In Agamben’s view, the genealogy decrees truth, reducing politics and theology alike to functional choreography. For Agamben, the state of exception is no longer a temporary suspension of order, as Carl Schmitt thought, but the hidden paradigm of modern governance itself. The exception becomes the historical process as genealogy, the rule merely confirms the exception. In theory, this yields a powerful diagnosis of modernity. In practice, it renders Agamben’s thought strangely gratuitous, socially disengaged, formally ingenious, but incapable of intervention or ethical stake. His apparatus dazzles with affirmation, yet leaves the world unchanged. While some may point to Agamben’s notion of “pure means” as evidence of potential political or ethical intervention, the framework demonstrates that these possibilities remain largely speculative, contained within the apparatus rather than enacted in the world.
What ultimately emerges is an implicit ontology of the apparatus, a vision in which reality itself is gradually replaced by the operations that claim to govern it. Yet, the consequences are social and ironic, human reality stubbornly intrudes. In tribunals, in the judgment of a magistrate, in the suffering of a particular individual, in the quiet acts of human care that escape every administrative category, the machine falters. The logical edifice cracks. Concepts remain animated in the text, but in the world they begin to fail. This is conceptual necromancy at work; life reappears on paper, while the living reality has already withdrawn.
In Agamben’s analysis, a concept is interpreted not by reference to its truth but by reference to its function within historical configurations of power. If theology can be fully explained by its role within an economy of government, then its ontological claims appear superfluous. The argument avoids confronting theology directly, it simply circumvents it. Yet if the ontological dimension cannot be absorbed into the functional, the reduction collapses. The claim to methodological neutrality evaporates. Theology is suspended, but politics and metaphysics quietly return through the back door as philosophical decisions. The reduction of ontology to function is itself a metaphysical choice.
Theology cannot be confidently affirmed as historical truth, yet modern political power still appears unintelligible without its vocabulary. Agamben appears to offer a way to retain the language while emptying it of metaphysical commitment. In this sense he stands in a strange constellation with figures such as William James and Karl Barth, though the similarities are deceptive. James approached religious language pragmatically, evaluating it by its existential consequences rather than by metaphysical certainty. Barth, by contrast, insisted that theology begins not with human categories but with divine revelation. Agamben shares neither position fully, he preserves the vocabulary without affirming the revelation that gave it birth. Unlike Schmitt, he does not juggle with ontological distinctions, yet pretends to transcend them. Benjamin preserves the messianic tension; Agamben offers the apparatus without its pulse. Heidegger, similarly, is a silent interlocutor, though he does not perform conceptual necromancy.
To read him as a political theorist making empirical claims, is to misunderstand the project entirely. This is what makes Agamben's stance a fortuitous and dishonest historical conflation. His concepts - bare life, the state of exception - belong to what he calls political ontology. They are not sociological descriptions but philosophical diagnoses of the metaphysical structure of modernity. In this interpretation, his work attempts to chart a third path between technological nihilism and religious restoration, a radical disenchantment of the world. If one challenges the empirical claims, Agamben answers that the argument is ontological; if one challenges the ontology, he answers that it is merely genealogical, that he is only undertaking a phenomenological operation, describing how concepts appear within history.
If something irreducible remains, an ontological element that escapes Agamben’s functional reduction, the genealogy is incomplete. Then the critique becomes the work of a charlatan sifting through the sands of the desert, extracting patterns where evidence does not sustain them. If, however, the system truly absorbs everything within its explanatory mechanism, the argument turns circular; it explains the world because it was constructed to absorb everything. Agamben appears less as a liberator of thought from theological illusion than as the most visible exponent of a philosophically defective tradition. The conceptual machine becomes suffocatingly coherent - Agamben, the Necromancer Supreme.
The ambiguity of the system is captured in the image with which his reconstruction of political theology concludes. If the throne is full, glory answers the presence it celebrates. If the throne is empty, glory nevertheless sustains it through acclamation. The apparatus functions in both cases. The difference lies only in whether the acclamation corresponds to reality or merely perpetuates an illusion.
But the price of this disenchantment is high. If the divine is reduced to symbolic residue, the language of transcendence becomes merely another instrument within the machinery of power. Acts committed “in the name of God” reveal no divine justice; they testify only to the persistence of historical illusion. The mechanism thus acquires a strange moral clarity. The world remains beautiful in its operability, yet the human being appears increasingly reduced to a creature trapped within the apparatus it has inherited. In Agamben’s horizon, the anticipation of death becomes the messianic condition that suspends the creative vocation of the human being. At that threshold, action no longer unfolds within a triumphant or providential logic, nor according to the beautiful, the good, or the divine. What remains is a humanity inhabiting the final remnants of historical time, dwelling among the exhausted inheritances of a past whose conceptual promises have already been spent.
A cautionary reminder that even the most brilliant Necromancer, Nietzsche, with his genealogy of morals, cannot resurrect life from what is already dead. If the patristic vision is correct, if oikonomia is not administration but the historical self-communication of the Triune life, then the machine is not the last word. The world is not merely governed, it is redeemed. The throne is not empty. And glory, in its true sense, is not the acclamation that sustains power, but the radiance of a presence that no apparatus can manufacture.
May 5, 2026
"The poet, obsessively occupied with keeping the love object at a distance, lives
in a symbiotic relationship with the parodist, who systematically inverts his intention." (46)
shoutout to the vivid mental imagery I got of Agamben casually watching porn and then thinking to himself "Since then, pornography has rendered this procedure banal: in the very act of executing their most intimate caresses, porn stars now look resolutely into the camera, showing that they are more interested in the spectator than in their partners." (89) right on brother.. right on
(i am going to be keeping the 1st, 7th and 8th chapters in the back of my throat for a while.)
in a symbiotic relationship with the parodist, who systematically inverts his intention." (46)
shoutout to the vivid mental imagery I got of Agamben casually watching porn and then thinking to himself "Since then, pornography has rendered this procedure banal: in the very act of executing their most intimate caresses, porn stars now look resolutely into the camera, showing that they are more interested in the spectator than in their partners." (89) right on brother.. right on
(i am going to be keeping the 1st, 7th and 8th chapters in the back of my throat for a while.)
October 17, 2023
Coletânea de ensaios sobre temas variados, achei alguns textos difíceis, não posso dizer que entendi tudo, mas dá pra perceber em todo livro umas observações e reflexões sagazes, inesperadas, como se o texto escavasse elas em temas pouco óbvios e nos surpreendesse. Começava lendo cada ensaio imaginando o que ele teria a dizer de interessante sobre "genios", "ajudantes", "o dia do juízo", e o modo como ele conecta e explora essas questões é muito bom. Em geral tem um fio "místico" que conecta os textos, a sensação é que os textos realmente estão profanando, revelando ao público mensagens obscuras.
Os que mais gostei foram o sobre Genius, Magia e Felicidade, O dia do Juízo, Os ajudantes, Desejar, Elogio a profanação. Outros ensaios como "O ser especial", "Paródia", "O autor como gesto", não consegui tirar tantas coisas ou compreender totalmente.
Algumas observações a quem interessar mais sobre os ensaios em específico:
O ensaio "Genius" fala do gênio em nós, aquilo que nasce na geração e representa o incontrolável, impessoal em nós, "Genius é a nossa vida, enquanto não nos pertence".
O ensaio "Magia e felicidade" também é interessante, falando da felicidade como aquilo que nos toma como magia, algo não controlável ou conquistável. "O dia do juízo", sobre fotografia, também muito bom, a captura de um gesto eterno. "Os ajudantes", um ensaio que no início parecia uma ideia distante, pouco relatável, acabei achando muito bom, falando sobre redenção, mensageiros, anjos "Uma qualidade dos ajudantes é a de serem “tradutores” (mutarjim) da língua de Deus para a língua dos homens. Segundo Ibn-Arabi, todo o mundo nada mais é que uma tradução da língua divina".
O texto do Desejo é curto e simplesmente espetacular, estes não podem ser trazidos a linguagem pois são pura imagens, ao tentarmos colocar em palavras aquilo que desejamos sempre torna a fantasia oca, vazia, pois no fundo ela escapa à linguagem.
Por fim, o texto "Elogio à profanação" é o que dá nome ao livro, e é um texto bem complicado, não consegui pegar tudo, mas o que consegui dar sentido gostei muito. Ele fala inicialmente dessa relação Sagrado e Profano, que envolve uma separação, uma transição do mundo dos homens ao divino ou vice e versa. Profanar é restituir ao uso comum. Depois o texto conecta isso com a sociedade atual, falando do capitalismo como nova religião (em referência a Walter Benjamin"). No capitalismo o consumo é um uso inexistente, existe somente na expectativa e na memória, e por isso, improfanável. Tudo é retirado do nosso uso, separado, mas também não se consegue restituir ao uso. Achei um texto amargo, me fez ficar pensando sobre a nossa relação com as coisas, nunca de forma presente, sempre inalcançáveis, na expectativa ou na memória. Para elucidar a questão ele fala sobre o jogo (separação do rito e de sua finalidade), dos museus, do turismo, da pornografia.
Os que mais gostei foram o sobre Genius, Magia e Felicidade, O dia do Juízo, Os ajudantes, Desejar, Elogio a profanação. Outros ensaios como "O ser especial", "Paródia", "O autor como gesto", não consegui tirar tantas coisas ou compreender totalmente.
Algumas observações a quem interessar mais sobre os ensaios em específico:
O ensaio "Genius" fala do gênio em nós, aquilo que nasce na geração e representa o incontrolável, impessoal em nós, "Genius é a nossa vida, enquanto não nos pertence".
Compreender a concepção de homem implícita em Genius equivale a compreender que o homem não é apenas Eu e consciência individual, mas que, desde o nascimento até à morte, ele convive com um elemento impessoal e pré-individual.
Todo o impessoal em nós é genial; genial é, sobretudo, a força que move o sangue em nossas veias ou nos faz cair em sono profundo, a desconhecida potência que, em nosso corpo, regula e distribui tão suavemente a tibieza e dissolve ou contrai as fibras dos nossos músculos. É Genius que, obscuramente, apresentamos na intimidade de nossa vida fisiológica, lá onde o mais próprio é o mais estranho e impessoal, o mais próximo é o mais remoto e indomável. Se não nos abadonássemos a Genius, se fôssemos apenas Eu e consciência, nunca poderíamos nem sequer urinar. Viver com Genius significa, nessa perspectiva, viver na intimidade de um ser estranho, manter-se constantemente vinculado a uma zona de não conhecimento
O ensaio "Magia e felicidade" também é interessante, falando da felicidade como aquilo que nos toma como magia, algo não controlável ou conquistável. "O dia do juízo", sobre fotografia, também muito bom, a captura de um gesto eterno. "Os ajudantes", um ensaio que no início parecia uma ideia distante, pouco relatável, acabei achando muito bom, falando sobre redenção, mensageiros, anjos "Uma qualidade dos ajudantes é a de serem “tradutores” (mutarjim) da língua de Deus para a língua dos homens. Segundo Ibn-Arabi, todo o mundo nada mais é que uma tradução da língua divina".
A ideia de que o Reino esteja presente no tempo profano em formas míopes e distorcidas, de que os elementos do estado final se escondam precisamente no que hoje aparece como infame e escarnecido, de que, em suma, a vergonha tenha a ver secretamente com a glória, é um tema messiânico profundo. Tudo o que agora nos aparece envilecido e de pouco valor é a fiança que deveremos resgatar no último dia, e quem nos guia para a salvação é precisamente o companheiro que se perdeu pelo caminho. É seu rosto que reconheceremos no anjo que toca a trombeta ou em quem, distraído, deixar cair das mãos o livro da vida. A réstia de luz que nasce em nossos defeitos e nossas pequenas baixezas não era senão a redenção. Ajudantes, nesse sentido, foram também o mau companheiro de escola que nos passou por baixo da carteira as primeiras fotografias pornográficas ou o sórdido quartinho onde alguém nos mostrou pela primeira vez a sua nudez. Os ajudantes são nossos desejos insatisfeitos, aqueles que não confessamos sequer a nós mesmos, que no dia do juízo virão a nosso encontro sorrindo como Artur e Jeremias. Naquele dia, alguém descontará nossos rubores como letras de câmbio para o paraíso. Reinar não significa satisfazer. Significa que o insatisfeito é o que permanece.
O texto do Desejo é curto e simplesmente espetacular, estes não podem ser trazidos a linguagem pois são pura imagens, ao tentarmos colocar em palavras aquilo que desejamos sempre torna a fantasia oca, vazia, pois no fundo ela escapa à linguagem.
Desejar é a coisa mais simples e humana que há. Por que, então, para nós são inconfessáveis precisamente nossos desejos, por que nos é tão difícil trazê-los à palavra? Tão difícil que acabamos mantendo-os escondidos, e construímos para eles, em algum lugar em nós, uma cripta, onde permanecem embalsamados, à espera.
Não podemos trazer à linguagem nossos desejos porque os imaginamos. Na realidade, a cripta contém apenas imagens, como é o caso de um livro de figuras para crianças que ainda não sabem ler, o caso das images d’Epinal de um povo analfabeto. O corpo dos desejos é uma imagem. E o que é inconfessável no desejo é a imagem que dele fizemos.
Por fim, o texto "Elogio à profanação" é o que dá nome ao livro, e é um texto bem complicado, não consegui pegar tudo, mas o que consegui dar sentido gostei muito. Ele fala inicialmente dessa relação Sagrado e Profano, que envolve uma separação, uma transição do mundo dos homens ao divino ou vice e versa. Profanar é restituir ao uso comum. Depois o texto conecta isso com a sociedade atual, falando do capitalismo como nova religião (em referência a Walter Benjamin"). No capitalismo o consumo é um uso inexistente, existe somente na expectativa e na memória, e por isso, improfanável. Tudo é retirado do nosso uso, separado, mas também não se consegue restituir ao uso. Achei um texto amargo, me fez ficar pensando sobre a nossa relação com as coisas, nunca de forma presente, sempre inalcançáveis, na expectativa ou na memória. Para elucidar a questão ele fala sobre o jogo (separação do rito e de sua finalidade), dos museus, do turismo, da pornografia.
De forma mais geral, tudo hoje pode tornar-se Museu, na medida em que esse termo indica simplesmente a exposição de uma impossibilidade de usar, de habitar, de fazer experiência.
Por essa razão, no Museu, a analogia entre capitalismo e religião se torna evidente. O Museu ocupa exatamente o espaço e a função em outro tempo reservados ao Templo como lugar do sacrifício. Aos fiéis no Templo – ou aos peregrinos que percorriam a terra de Templo em Templo, de santuário em santuário – correspondem hoje os turistas, que viajam sem trégua num mundo estranhado em Museu. Mas enquanto os fiéis e os peregrinos participavam, no final, de um sacrifício que, separando a vítima na esfera sagrada, restabelecia as justas relações entre o divino e o humano, os turistas celebram, sobre a sua própria pessoa, um ato sacrifical que consiste na angustiante experiência da destruição de todo possível uso. Se os cristãos eram “peregrinos”, ou seja, estrangeiros sobre a terra, porque sabiam que tinham no céu a sua pátria, os adeptos do novo culto capitalista não têm pátria alguma, porque residem na forma pura da separação. Aonde quer que vão, eles encontrarão, multiplicada e elevada ao extremo, a própria impossibilidade de habitar, que haviam conhecido nas suas casas e nas suas cidades, a própria incapacidade de usar, que haviam experi-mentado nos supermercados, nos shopping centers e nos espetáculos televisivos. Por isso, enquanto representa o culto e o altar central da religião capitalista, o turismo é atualmente a primeira indústria do mundo, que atinge anualmente mais de 650 milhões de homens. E nada é mais impressionante do que o fato de milhões de homens comuns conseguirem realizar na própria carne talvez a mais desesperada experiência que a cada um seja permitido realizar: a perda irrevogável de todo uso, a absoluta impossibilidade de profanar.
February 12, 2018
Agamben's reflections on cultural artefacts, materialism, and genius alternate between the poetic and the theoretical, and find their beauty in their litheness. This engaging and accessible collection of short essays uses etymology and cultural histories to address the crossing points between the divine and the human. He reframes debates about authorship, photography, and parody within the motion of the gesture and human playfulness to address psychological functions and the cultural performativity of human action in text and image. Agamben's text is deft and insightful in its demand for a new response of the viewer and reader. Deserves multiple readings.
March 24, 2020
Snack-sized Agamben. Occasionally moving, great quotes and some tips on how to practice self-love whilst brushing one's teeth. Tries a bit too hard to convince us he doesn't like porn, though.
March 14, 2021
Πολύ μικρό ώστε να σε χορτάσει τόσο όσο. Η μαγεία του να μην υπάρχει τίποτα περιττό.
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